Chrzanowska v Glaxo Laboratories Ltd
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 12 March 1990 |
| Date | 12 March 1990 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division |
Queen's Bench Division
Before Mr Justice Steyn
Practice - group litigation - new procedures required
The problem of the procedures to be adopted in group litigation under the English system of civil litigation should be investigated and it would be desirable that an outline procedure should be prescribed.
Mr Justice Steyn so stated in the Queen's Bench Division in giving directions in the matter of group litigation against the defendants, Glaxo Laboratories Ltd, the manufacturers of Myodil. The plaintiff, Barbara Chrzanowska, claimed damages for an inflammation of the protective membranes of the spine said to have been caused by an injection of Myodil.
The plaintiff sought an order (i) that one judge be appointed to hear all applications in the trial of the proposed actions between divers plaintiffs and the defendants and (ii) that any cost incurred or ordered to be paid by any plaintiff should be paid equally by all plaintiffs.
Mr Augustus Ullstein and Miss Selina Parkes for the plaintiff; Mr Jeremy Stuart-Smith for the defendants.
MR JUSTICE STEYN said that at present English law did not permit a class action in the sense in which that expression was used in the United States.
English law did recognize, by virtue of Order 15, rule 12 of the Rules of the Supreme Court, the notion of a representative action. That procedure was no doubt capable of development but its present limitations were such that it could probably not be used when damages had to be separately assessed in respect of different cases.
In England the parties had to use the ordinary procedures devised for the trial of single actions to cope with such group litigation. In the instant case, the court had the benefit of the procedures adopted and devised in recent examples of group litigation, most notably by Mr Justice Hirst in the Opren litigation.
If the courts did not have the power to devise new procedures to deal with such cases the system would break down.
Our system of civil justice ought for the benefit of parties involved in group litigation prescribe at least in outline, the procedures to be adopted. The 1990s might well witness an increase in group...
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